“The HSE wishes to reiterate its apology to all of the women impacted by the delays in issuing important information to them.”
The Health Service Executive of Ireland (HSE) has pledged to develop “a culture of putting women first” as the organisation takes “immediate actions” in response to a detailed report into the CervicalCheck IT issue.
Commissioned by the HSE and overseen by Professor Brian MacCraith, the Independent Rapid Review assessed specific issues in relation to the CervicalCheck screening programme.
According to the Rapid Review report, over 3,000 women did not initially receive their results due to an IT issue, significantly more than had first been reported.
On Tuesday afternoon (6 August), the HSE officially responded to the findings, announcing plans to strengthen the structures of the CervicalCheck programme alongside developing a culture that puts women first while accounting for those affected.
“The HSE accepts entirely the findings of the MacCraith Review,” noted HSE CEO Paul Reid.
“The HSE commits to a careful and expeditious implementation in full of each of his recommendations. The HSE wishes to reiterate its apology to all of the women impacted by the delays in issuing important information to them.
“On foot of Professor McCraith’s report, I have set out a number of immediate actIons including:
“Strengthening the management, leadership and organisation of CervicalCheck; developing a culture of putting women first; establishing a clinical evaluation and assessment of the women impacted; establish an audit of Quest’s IT processes and interfaces.”
Elaborating on the proposed steps, Reid outlined that the “culture of putting women first” will involve:
- Engagement with patient reps and our recently established patient panel for screening
- Ensure the Patient and Public Partnership strategy currently being developed under Dr Scally’s action plan incorporates putting “women first”
- Consideration by interim CEO of National Screening Service (NSS), and recommendations to CEO of the HSE and HSE Board
With regards to strengthening the overall management of CervicalCheck, the HSE has announced the appointment of Celine Fitzgerald as interim CEO.
The organisation also intends to fill “key” positions while “mitigating recruitment and retention challenges”.
Those roles include Director of Public Health, CervicalCheck Programme Manager, Enhanced CervicalCheck Laboratory Resource, Quality Assurance Resource, Risk and Incident Management and a Quest Operations Manager.
Reid also declared the intention to enforce a “wider assessment of accountability framework” within the HSE.
It was also noted that “listening to the voices of women is a key feature of the recommendations from Dr Scally’s report” and that to date the HSE has developed 116 actions stemming from said report, of which 74 are complete.
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